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Laven: A Laven is a subspecies of Raven that uses Lasers.Laven: A troll boat see: Battle NoctisBackground:Once debated to be a crossbreed side effect due
to the creation of the Sansha ships the Laven is thought to have escaped
labs where it lurked, deep in the unknown recesses of Faction Warfare space.
There, the Laven fed off of orbital belts where the strong energies of
the brighter stars were absorbed as additional fuel. It is thought that
their vestigial lasers, normally absorbed during manufacturing were stimulated
by this excessive sunlight. This allowed the Laven to develop into a small,
unknown niche where they were fed by colonel settlers abandoned by capsuleers.

Eventually, flocks
of Laven were scattered about contested, low security space. Weak and shy they were too fragile to compete
with the Raven Navy Issue that lurked the belts of 0.0 space. Cast out of
high sec due to the superiority and high numbers of their Raven cousins, Laven
eventually found a place. It was n…

The trickledown effect of interest that the most recent capital battle has generated around the internet is that people are asking about Eve as
a game to play. Beyond the "How do I get into that fight" part
of the desire is the basic, "What kind of game is it?"

I'm not one to go
on about, "this terrible stupid game". That mantra must be
beyond my doe eyed adoration. In my
little, simple world, when something is terrible and stupid I avoid it. If I continue to play it obsessively it is
not terrible and stupid. Thankfully, subtly of language is beyond me so I like to take statements like that as fact
from the author and then feel bad for them.
One thing that has
always frustrated me about any review is when someone gives something a negative
review because they wanted it to be something else. If I want an orange
and go eat an apple, I then do not score the apple as a 1 out of 10 for not
being an orange. If the apple presented itself as an orange …

I decided to be fancy and look at numbers to end the month as if I knew what I was doing with them.

The main reason this happened is that I was skimming the killboard the other day and noticed that we had a lot more kills this month then I ever remember seeing on the board. I looked over it and sure enough, January has been a very busy month followed by December.

While THC2 has often had a steady upsweep in activity by the month with the occasional low points (these normally show activity, at one point there were only three active members for a few months) the last two months the numbers have been startling.
We are both killing and losing more stuff. We are killing much more then we are losing but the numbers are heading up. Our corp history from Eve Kill can be found here.

[TL;DR: Sugar's high
horse of individual acceptance summery of a chat discussion this morning.
AKA Babbling.] "Can you see up
from all the way up on that soap box? You are pretty high." "No, this high up
there are too many clouds. Once it rains it should clear up." And thus ended a
discussion I probably should have refrained from having in a public chatroom
and stuck to having on my blog where I can run around and write long, wandering
threads of thought in a more suitable environment. It is easy
enough for me to forget that not everyone wants to have discussions
on societal behaviors in video games. Topics that creep up
across the game tend to echo. The discussions grow and shrink for various
reasons. At the core there is often a simple kernel that means
something is an issue. An issue large enough that it is
bothering different groups of people in the same way, often without their
interacting with each other. The fundamental nature
and aspect of Eve is oft…

I wandered across a
decision based upon an idea today that had an unexpectedly sensible and
comfortable solution for me. There has been a steady
trickle of interest in the corporation of late. This is not a bad thing.
It has been a mix of experienced players
and inexperienced players. Growth seems to be a thing but
mixing new people into the group causes some shifting and resettlement. A
lot of what we are doing as a corporation has started to need definition.
Therefore I tasked myself with sending the boys a serious mail
where I ask them to tell me what they wanted done. So far it has been
productive and it is helping me with the entire direction when it comes
to recruiting people thing. For some reason they trust me to
make a certain amount of decisions Why? Who knows.
But, they have left me to run around and try to figure out
the recruiting thing. Recruiting people in
general is not simple. It's not just a 'okay join up and be a body'.
Small gang types need a lo…

We had run out of targets but still had a lot of energy and the high sec system one jump out of low had a full ice belt. "Who wants to go suicide gank someone?" It turned out that everyone was up for it.

Suicide Ganking has been something on my list of things to do. I've participated in fleets as support but I have not yet been one of the shooters. For a long time, I looked at it with distaste. Later, it just seemed wasteful and then still later I decided that I wanted to give it a try.

I can't answer the, "Why suicide gank" thing other then it is something to do. I don't run around and pretend to have a motive like the Miner Bumpers do. It is something that I wanted to try and someone was going to be unhappy with the end result if it was done properly. It is also something to learn. I would like to try my hand at destroying untanked T1 industrial haulers for profit. I've done exactly zero high sec pvp/ganking/whatever the hot button descrip…

It started with a simple enough question in a market channel. "There are really market bots?" To which several people informed the poor soul that, "Yes, there are market bots." I was watching a trade channel and someone said they believed that CCP should allow botting for market trading. I was stunned and asked, "What?""I'd like for market bots to be legal with a standardized API provided by ccp. Make people focus on the algorithms they use to update their orders and prices. Rather than on adjusting orders manually by 0.01 ISK every 5 minutes. It would make stupid trading entirely pointless or at least mostly pointless"
The group advised him that he might want to adjust his trading habits if he thought that the solution would be a bot. Someone asked him, "What's your problem?""I don't have any "problem". I think legalized market bots would make traders think more and eliminate a part of the game that i…

7-2 broken down their base in Assah and moved. Like the loyal camp follower that I am I jump cloned over, pulled down my market orders. I then hitched a ride on the nearest carrier for my goods. With my stuff secured and on its way, I hopped into a Rookie ship and made my way down the road towards the next stop. Thirty some jumps later, I settled in, reaccepted my stuff and restocked the market

The move is up into Minmatar Faction Warfare space it seems. I'd already been meaning (but not accomplishing) hanging out in the area. This created a perfect situation for me to move my stack of frigates and start some of my own adventures in exploding. Or so I hope.

Pirate invasion of Faction Warfare space is a go. I think. As I've stated before, I enjoy 7-2. The feel is very different. My biggest problem at the moment is that I cannot fit several of their fleet comps. My lack of large guns is very telling at this point. I had planned to work my way up through medium T2 la…

[In the time honored tradition of Eve online, Sugar
discussed things she doesn't know anything about in the most random way.]

I know that no one
is tired of hearing the endless streams of topics about the various major bits
of drama that have gushed all over the game of late. After what seemed
to be a quite Fall and sleepy holiday things went wild. Retribution was
fun and appreciated but the rage with bounties, tears of mission runners and
new joy over the cruiser changes were mild compared to the plethora of frothing
over the CSM minutes and my own personal tears over the BC changes.
Thankfully, some
people have not abandoned the habit of discussing things they know nothing
about and suggesting terrible ideas for change. Knowing that I do
not participate enough in these instates, often too busy hiding from my own
Legion or bouncing around in frigates and blockade runners, I felt that it was
time to do my duty.
I started to
wonder… what about peoples stuff?
You see, one of
the…

It is funny, as I watch this battle going down and ships are being destroyed left and right that the sheer beauty of some of the screen shots take your breath away. I don't know who took it, I'd love to give it credit. I saw it copied on one of the live feeds and it has traveled across the chat channels.

While we mostly watch Eve from a distance and the brightly colored pixalted boxes mean a lot to us, the moments where we can truly absorb Eve's imagery are wonderful reminders about the lovely aspects of the game.

Eve is full of historical moments. Random incidents that spark a massive surge of player interaction. These things happen because we are all in the same place. People will talk about the mess in Asakai for a long time. Battle reports, reviews, and stories told over a pint will whisper through the game.

I watched. I watched for hours. I also roamed during the time. We killed a lot of things as we kept track of what was happening only a few jumps away. &q…

With the incoming ship changes in Retribution and coming up in
Retribution 1.2 new skills have been added and will be added. There will
also be other skills that will make the entry into some
ships simpler However, the skills that are added are support
and secondary skills that will increase the length of time for a
newer player to fly a ship very well.

I had to take a
two month break from turning my scout into a perfect scanner for the
battlecruiser skill changes. She is also a combat pilot (technically) and
it would have been silly for me to skip out on that part of the change.
However, as I get back onto track to finish topping everything off to
fives across the board I notice that becoming a
maximized explorer takes some time. And while a new player may
not have to have fives across the board I wondered if the bar of entry might be
a bit higher than it needs to be.
There is already a precedent for
these things. Barges have become easier to access across the board.
Skills …

[Must Serious Post for a moment]
Like elections
IRL, the CSM elections have started to ramp up before the populace was quite
ready. As I flipped through the formal notifications for some of the
runners I see that they stretch all the way back to November.
The CSM is an
interesting institution in Eve. Created as a player
representative group to CCP they are voted in by the players. The
entire election system has become a series of campaign platforms by
people who state the reasons they wish to run and the focuses they wish the
bring to CCP in hopes of players voting on them.
The player
population, similar to several real life populations, are often indifferent,
uninformed and uninvolved in the election. The CSM has come and gone but
as the positions have aged so have they matured. The history of turmoil and
all that good dramatic stuff I won't get into. I've only been around for
a year and I'd have to rehash rehashed history.
The point is that
the CSM is an elected b…

If we were sitting at a table, I'd have just stared at him, wide eyed for a while. As it was, my fingers slowed across my keyboard as my mind processed the information. I think my brain rebooted. For one, I'm always startled and confused when someone comes to me for advice. For two, it isn't the normal kind of question I am used to answering when I answer questions.

The running away part wasn't that hard. I'm well versed in that. It was running away and avoiding PvP. As long as I've been tottering around low sec I've been taught to fit your ship for PvP and go down fighting. I've died in a fire before. I've died slowly. I've died jammed. I've sat there as I poured pure DPS hellfire out of my autocannons and didn't even scratch through reps as I died.

The next question might be my own post about my cloaky loki. The difference is, I'll still have a point on my Loki and should I f…